


hairpins

by elizajane



Series: and behold, it was so very good [1]
Category: Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Established Relationship, First Kiss, M/M, Mutual Pining, Post-Canon, Unresolved Sexual Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-29
Updated: 2019-06-29
Packaged: 2020-05-29 13:34:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,881
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19401361
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/elizajane/pseuds/elizajane
Summary: Crowley's hair has never quite gotten the knack of being human.





	hairpins

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Crowgirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Crowgirl/gifts).



> For my wife, because it was her fandom first.
> 
> Happy 10th anniversary my dear; eternally grateful you were brave enough to kiss me first.

They don't talk about it. Ever.

Oh, Crowley makes snide remarks each and every time. He indulges in displays of ill temper -- even as he sits where Aziraphale's emphatic index finger indicates -- makes sure to flick his tongue in irritation, arms crossed, legs sprawled like a grumpy human teenager.

He performs the necessary pantomime of _why do I put up with you?_ tonight as he settles into Aziraphale's overstuffed armchair, legs kicked over one armrest as his spine curls against the other in a manner calculated to raise Aziraphale's eloquent eyebrow. He closes his eyes and listens to the soothing sounds of Aziraphale moving about the flat: opening this drawer, rummaging under that open book, picking up this and pocketing that. He shivers against the pleasure of Aziraphale finally laying gentle hands upon him. The first careful tug of the comb. The soft _tsk tsk_ of Aziraphale's despair over Crowley's lank and tangled hair. The way Aziraphale's fingers curl against the nape of Crowley's neck as he teases apart the next knot, and the next.

Still. None of that is _talking_ , you see. Not _really_ , Crowley promises himself. If anyone asks -- if Hastur asks -- he can deny up, down, across, and through that any of this _matters_ ; that Aziraphale and his murmurs of reproach -- reproach that slowly, every time, transform into murmurs of satisfaction -- _mean_ anything.

Silence, Crowley tells himself, is protection.

Crowley's hair has never quite gotten the knack of being human. Often, as Aziraphale works -- gently, methodically, firmly -- to untangle the strands Crowley feels how they wind possessively around Aziraphale's wrists. _Of their own volition_ , he thinks firmly, as Aziraphale nudges his head a millimeter to the left with the brush of a knuckle behind his right ear. A wayward tendril tickles the curve of Crowley's earlobe as it reaches to brush back. Is it his imagination that Aziraphale's breath hitches, almost imperceptible even to a demon's hearing, as Crowley's hair caresses the pulse-point just where Aziraphale's tidy cuffs emerge from his corduroy jacket?

Crowley doesn’t ask (he never does) because if he doesn’t ask he can keep imagining that Aziraphale does this purposefully. That fussing over and fixing Crowley’s hair is an excuse to touch. To be near. To leave his mark. It would be unbearable to ask and have the answer be a quizzical frown, an outright denial. Crowley’s mouth goes dry at the thought that this ritual of decades is not a pleasure shared.

No. If he doesn’t ask he can’t be disappointed.

Aziraphale's touch _does_ things to Crowley. His hands are soft and supple; Crowley suspects a daily regimen involving a nail brush and scented lotions. At the same time, they're strong and sure. As Aziraphale moves from combing to braiding -- the intricate latticework of braids in the French style, eventually looped and pinned securely just above where the neck Crowley's turtleneck sweater stops protecting him from accidental intimacies -- his hands never hesitate. He tugs Crowley ever so slightly this way and that, Crowley all too aware that he doesn't want this to end. Never wants this to end. That he likes being handled by Aziraphale, tugged and shaped into something finer. The longer Aziraphale fusses over him, the more pliant he becomes, the easier it is to let his mind drift to fantasies that involve curling more than his half-sentient hair around Aziraphale’s form. He's woken from more than one nap curled in the best window-well of his flat -- the one at the best angle for afternoon sun -- to half-remembered, sinuous dreams of sliding up Aziraphale from ankle to knee to torso to neck until he can tuck his head into the warm security that is the pale skin at Aziraphale's throat when he pulls off his tie at the end of the day and loosens a button or two. _Mmmm. Yesss._

He wonders, but never asks, if Aziraphale dreams, too.

At first, from his post here on Earth, Crowley had assumed that once -- in the time before, in the time _before_ time -- he would have known the sensual touch of angels. Back when he was one of them. Demons didn’t touch one another the way Aziraphale touched Crowley -- soft, frequent, often without immediate purpose beyond simple contact. In the early centuries of his assignment down here on good old _terra firma_ Crowley had bitterly imagined Heaven as a place where beings touched one another easily, generously, without causing one another pain. Crowley’s idea of Heaven, after all, involved -- quite centrally, _necessarily_ \-- physical contact with Aziraphale. As much of it as celestially possible. He is deeply ashamed to admit, even if only to himself -- and only after a particularly potent glass of Glenalba -- that it wasn't until the fifth century that Crowley noticed how Aziraphale flinches away from the touch of other angels. That, in fact, Aziraphale touched few sentient beings at all easily, casually, and that the only being he touched with anything approaching regularity was Crowley.

Perhaps both of them have imagined a kind of heaven that Heaven itself would not, in fact, provide.

After that, it had only been a matter of noticing, and ... _facilitating_ , Crowley likes to call it, the same way he facilitates such delightful horrors as the impossibility of successfully unsubscribing to a listserv or that particular shade of avocado that had been declared one of 1973's colors of the year. He's _facilitated_ Aziraphale's apparent need to touch Crowley as often as Aziraphale can muster up the barest of excuses. Side-by-side seats on the bus that make the press of knee to thigh inevitable. A hand laid firmly on Crowley's arm to drag him right instead of left. The brush of fingers as they pass a glass of Pinot Grigio back and forth across the restaurant table. The slide of Aziraphale's fingertips over Crowley's scalp as he laments the unkempt state of Crowley's hair.

It's all too easy to let the wind do its work with the Bentley's windows wide open, then saunter into Aziraphale's bookshop just as the last customer departs. The rest of the evening scripts itself.

Tonight, it had been a Pinot Noir and takeaway from the local American pizzeria that put sweetcorn on the ham and pineapple. Crowley loves the absurdity of it, and loves the way Aziraphale's face lights up with delight when he catches sight of the box in Crowley's hands. Loves the blush of pink that graces Aziraphale’s cheeks as they share a third glass of wine, and then a fourth. Aziraphale _enjoys_ things too much, Crowley thinks, through the pleasant buzz of alcohol, that’s why Heaven doesn’t deserve him. Crowley is the only one who deserves the pleasure that is Aziraphale’s pleasure.

He’s the only one who’s taken the time to notice, after all.

"There," Aziraphale says with satisfaction at the back of Crowley’s head as he smooths the final twisting curl into place and secures it with a hairpin. Crowley never brings them back, the hairpins. He has a jam jar nearly full of them, sitting on his nightstand. When that one fills, he’ll put it away in the cupboard with the others and begin another. An accumulated chronicle representing decades, centuries, of Aziraphale’s care.

And still, despite Crowley’s hoarding, Aziraphale always has a ready supply. Crowley sometimes considers this small, angelic mystery as he lays in bed on sleepless nights, eyes resting on the gleam of pins in the darkness. He imagines Aziraphale at the chemist's, pausing in the aisle full of hair elastics and multicolored baubles. Picking out packages of the straight pins he favors, perhaps lingering over some of the more flash selections. Crowley has seen the way Aziraphale holds himself back from brighter colors, louder music, intense flavors, infinitesimal hesitations before he chooses something more staid. Sensible. Made to last and be appreciated.

 _There_ , Aziraphale has said, tonight, of a job well done. He will pull his hands away, now, and Crowley commands his hair not to follow the retreating heat of him, not to undo all of Aziraphale's artistry before Crowley has had the chance to unsettle a single passerby. Grin from behind his sunglasses in the evening light at the doubletake from a stranger who won't be able to decide if the person sliding into the driver's side of the Bentley is male or female. Both. Neither.

But Aziraphale doesn't pull his hands away tonight.

Crowley stops breathing, flicks his tongue out to taste the air. It tastes of pizza, of wine, of Aziraphale: Rich, freshly-inked paper and the damp earth after the rain. Industry, creativity, generation. _Life_. Whenever Aziraphale is nearby Crowley soaks the warmth of that aliveness in and hoards it against what he fears most of all: future drought. The day the sun rises on an existence where he no longer has ... this.

He blinks his eyes open, straightens from his crosswise slouch in the armchair. He can't see Aziraphale's face, can't read in his expression all that he might want to say but isn't. Aziraphale's hands have come to rest lightly on Crowley's shoulders, thumbs just skimming the back of Crowley's neck. Not holding him down, not urging him up. Just -- there.

Crowley thinks perhaps Aziraphale has stopped breathing too.

Aziraphale rubs one of his thumbs over the bump of vertebrae at the top of Crowley's spine. Crowley inhales, sharply. Aziraphale pauses -- a tick, then two of the old mantle clock -- but when Crowley takes no further action he resumes the slow, circular motion. Aziraphale’s hands are warm through the knit of Crowley’s black turtleneck, the pad of his thumb tracing the edge of one of the scales that run along Crowley’s spine -- one of the soft, inhuman parts of himself that Crowley keeps even when passing for human. Aziraphale knows they’re there, of course he does, because Aziraphale knows every inch of Crowley.

Crowley should move. He always has before. He should fling himself out of the chair. Say something caustic. _Took you long enough, angel. Happy now?_ Stalk out the door and back to the Bentley. End the moment before either of them did something as appallingly ill-advised as --

Crowley whimpers.

Aziraphale pauses. Inhales.

Before Aziraphale can speak, Crowley twists in his seat and catches Aziraphale’s wrist to stop him from stepping back. _Don’t,_ he opens his mouth to say. _Don’t say it. Don’t stop. Don’t let anyone see._

Aziraphale looks down at Crowley’s fingers closed too tight, too desperate around his wrist. Then up at Crowley’s face.

Crowley can’t manage a single word. But Aziraphale doesn’t seem to need one. Instead of speaking, he reaches out with the hand Crowley hasn’t captured and skims gentle, familiar fingers up Crowley’s throat to lay his palm lightly against Crowley’s jaw.

And Crowley -- Crowley _leans_ into the touch. Without taking his eyes from Aziraphale’s face, he rubs his cheek against the soft tips of Aziraphale's fingers, feeling the rasp, feeling how well he fits in the warmth of Aziraphale’s palm. He turns his head to press a kiss there: The barest brush of lips, a flick of his tongue, more taste than seduction. Aziraphale tastes as exquisite and singular as Crowley has always known he would.

"Oh. Oh, my dear," Aziraphale breathes into the air between them. And perhaps that's the only thing that need be said after all.

**Author's Note:**

> I make no promises, but I rarely stop with a single fic in any fandom and I think Aziraphale has a few things to say here. So there will probably be a sequel or a chapter two.


End file.
